


they say the wretched get their kingdom

by magpirate



Category: Captain America (Movies), captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Artificial Insemination, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, HYDRA Trash Party, Kidnapping, Oral Sex, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Winter Soldier!Bucky, forced impregnation, mild elements of dehumanization, misplaced affection, this is trash and i can't believe i wrote it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:01:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3639411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpirate/pseuds/magpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is this a blessing or a curse?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> courtesy of the hydra trash meme. this is a bit of an id fic for my own satisfaction. first foray into the trash party so there's that???

Stella comes to with a pounding headache and an overwhelming feeling of illness settled in the back of her throat.

Her mind reels, feeling slow and confused, and even with her eyes open, she reaches nothing but darkness. Blindfolded. The elevator. Rumlow and STRIKE-- they'd had something, something strong enough to take her down in a way that didn't mean combat. The sick feeling in her throat burns, lunch threatening to make a return, and she swallows thickly in order to prevent it. They'd shoved a needle into her throat. Sedatives of some sort, likely something strong enough to kill a horse, and all it had done was knock her out.

For how long?

Stella calms her breathing, taking stock of her body. She's restrained, somehow. Testing her arms and her legs, she can feel the firmness of metal holding her down. There's some manner of collar around her throat, cool steel. Experimentally, she tries to lift her head. The metal's magnetized to the table she's lying on. Perfect. The Captain tugs on the restraints. They feel flexible, in a way that tells her that they're made to put the victim into other positions, and the intention is lost on her. The magnetic cuffs they'd come at her with are locked firmly against her wrists and held against her sides, amped up much further than she thought the damn things were even made to go. She can't move her hands, and tugging at her legs is doing no good.

Panic rises thickly in her chest, and as she swallows once again she feels the metal collar, sturdy against her throat. She can't identify how it's supposed to come off. It feels more like she'd snap her neck sooner than get out of it. More motion tells her that the clothes she's wearing are not the uniform she'd been wearing when they'd come after her. There's a crinkling sound, like paper, and they do nothing to shield her from the coolness that completely envelopes her surroundings. Her hair is loose, she can feel it tickling her collarbone underneath the papery coverings. She gives up on trying to pull her limbs out of the restraints, lays her head carefully down on the table, and focuses on keeping her breathing even. No, panic makes it harder to plan. If she lets herself panic, it'll be that much harder to figure out an escape.

"About time you woke up." A voice says nearby, and Stella tenses. She hadn't realized anyone else was in the room. The blindfold is thick, and it's impossible to tell if there are lights on, let alone someone else standing over her. "The Secretary wanted you to be awake for this procedure, against Rumlow's better judgement."

Procedure?

"Safe to assume Rumlow's not on my side anymore." Stella growls under her breath, once again forcing herself to stay calm. Take stock of the situation. Listen. Under her own breathing she can hear the shuffling of paper and adjustment of machinery. The original person who spoke was standing to the left of her, and the lack of footsteps tells her that they haven't moved. The shifting of papers comes from the right, a distance away, as does the adjusting of machinery. At least two people, potentially three.

"No, he's not. He had the hots for you for months, though. Pierce said you were reserved for someone else. You shoulda seen him, nearly blew his damn stack..." The stranger laughs. The voice is unfamiliar, someone Stella knows she's never met before.

"Will you shut up?" Someone else says. Second person. The shuffling of papers continues. "We're not here to tell her everything, genius." The voice is feminine. Bored, annoyed. "Pierce expects to see positive results or a solution if you mess it up." They're techs, Stella realizes. Not agents. Technicians. People who don't fight, who research and analyze and plan. Dread is hot in the pit of her stomach, but these restraints are strong. She can't get out of this.

"Yeah, yeah," grumbles the male voice (Stella deems him First). "I've done this before, I know how to make it work. If it doesn't it's Pierce's own damn fault, his creepy pet assassin supplied the goods."

"I'll let him know you said that." replies Second, and the sound of a scissors to her left makes Stella tense once again, pulling at her restraints. Her jaw is grabbed quite suddenly, fingers digging into her cheeks, as someone forces some manner of object into her mouth. It holds down her tongue and keeps her from speaking, and deft hands secure it to the collar against the back of her neck. Long enough to keep it in place, short enough for her to have no way to maneuver it out of her mouth.

"There." Second seems satisfied with herself, and Stella tries to pull her leg away as First begins to slice away the papery clothing that had at least kept her decency. "That'll make it easier on everyone for what comes later."

"I'm more concerned with what happens now." First snickers to himself. "Captain America's supposed to be a virgin, you know. Why do you think Rumlow's so eager to get ahold of her?"

Stella feels her heart begin to race as the cold steel of the scissors brush against her thigh. The pants are cut away, and whatever underwear had been shielding her follows soon after. She can't stop herself from shivering at how exposed she suddenly feels and automatically tries to push her thighs together to cover herself-- her attempts are interrupted by a dim whirring sound as the restraints that hold her are adjusted. Her legs are forced into an elevated position, her thighs spread open to reveal the pinkness between them, and Stella feels the gag crack under her teeth as she bites down hard on it.

First gives a whistle.

"Ain't that a cute little cunt." He says, his fingers brushing against her opening. They're soft, lacking the callouses Stella associates with active work. Bile rises in her throat again at the sensation, a stranger's touch while she's in a painfully vulnerable position. "No wonder everyone volunteered for the cameras in her apartment."

"The cameras are going now, too, though they don't have audio." Second answers him. Her tone still sounds bored. "Now move over and stop touching. Secretary's orders, remember? He wants his assassin playing bodyguard for Insight launch and if this doesn't work we'll need to borrow the creep til it does."

Assassin. Stella makes the connection in her head; inevitably, they must mean whoever it was that had killed Fury the night before. Another shiver runs through her body, the cold and the panic coming together to make it damn difficult to keep herself under control. She can handle this. She'd dealt with threats of rape and violation before, she'd get out again.

Except those times, she'd had her Commandos. Except those times, STRIKE had been able to intervene before anyone touched her. Except those times, Bucky had been ready with a sarcastic answer and an expert shot. Anger and fear mix together in her chest and she tries to make a noise of protest as those same fingers pull her labia apart to give the other tech a better look at the opening.

"Aw, isn't Rumlow going to be unhappy. She's not a virgin. Is Captain America a little whore?" Second's voice is mocking, and hatred joins the anger and fear.

"She will be when we're finished with her." First answers, and he laughs.

The gag cracks again under her teeth. The fingers holding her open adjust again, and Stella stiffens up as she feels something small and thin very gradually pressed into her. A tube, she realizes. It's too thin to be any kind of toy, too cold to be any kind of organic matter. The machinery that she'd heard before, it must've been closer than she thought. A smaller machine than she thought. It feels like all the heat's been sapped from her body, sickness churning in her stomach and her heart pounding in her ears.

"Snug fit." Second comments. "I bet she hasn't fucked anyone since 1945." Her footsteps move to the other side of the machine. There's the sound of plastic adjusting, and a wet sound follows. "How'd they get this much? Nobody even wants to fuckin' go near the Soldier, who got him off?"

"No idea. I'd hate to get that job." First answers, and Stella feels a pressure deep inside of her that rapidly turns into pain. Her cervix, she thinks quite numbly. They've forced the tube past it. She's begun to realize what the intention here is and the panic has become near paralyzing. Stella struggles uselessly against the handcuffs that keep her hands restrained to her side, struggling to breathe as a tooth digs into a crack in the gag.

"Mm. This one's not so bad, though." One of them says it, but the voices are so distant to her now that Stella can't identify it. The other agrees, somehow, and a switch is flicked on the machine.

The impact is almost instantaneous. Stella can't stop the whimper that follows as a warmth slides down the tube, a heat that trickles through her and right into her body. This is wrong, she thinks, this is wrong, any minute now she'll wake up, Bucky will come through the door and take both of them down. The heat is the only thing she can focus on now, distress and the inability to see or talk amounting to a sensation that settles into a pinprick in the pit of her stomach. It pools there, insidiously, and she can't fight it. The trickle is slow but steady, persistent.

She feels herself throbbing around the tube, feels a pulse of pain. It's not meant to go that far, that deeply, it hurts in a way that she wasn't prepared to ever feel, let alone defend against. The duo of techs make idle small-talk while she writhes in the restraints, but the metal is doing it's job well, and the Captain can't move an inch. Her heart pounds in her ears, loud enough to block out the idle conversation and the slow mechanical sounds from the machinery.

It's nothing to them, she realizes. A job. Routine. The sense of violation and disgust turns her stomach, and she hears footsteps to her side. Time passes, though she doesn't know how long, and eventually the trickle of warmth into her body stops. Her panic never once fades, making her hyperaware of everyting- First's bored tone as he fixes the machinery, Second's persistent nagging, the way both of them decide to treat her like something non-human. They haven't used her name once, she realizes, and the dread and confusion makes her chest tight.

The tube is pulled from her cunt slowly, deliberately, and she feels every inch of it. There is no dribble of excess fluid, no sensation of loss, only a deep and intense ache settled in her abdomen, paired with an uncomfortable fullness that makes her whole body tense and on edge.

"All done." Second says, sweetly, in a tone that reminds Stella of seeing an old man and his dog a few days back. "It's rather nice of you not to be so loud, half the people we try this on are screaming and crying within the first few minutes... You must be such a good girl."

"She's getting off on this." First remarks rather sarcastically. "Y'think all that's the Soldier's goods? Yeah, right."

One of them laughs. Bile rises in the back of her throat. She's aware of the gag all but shattering in her mouth, and distracted just a few seconds too long as another needle slips into her neck and the darkness that swallows her becomes all that much colder.

\------

When she wakes, she's unrestrained. Her mouth is dry and the fullness in her gut is absent, though when she forces herself to sit up nausea hits her rather violently, and she covers her mouth to prevent herself from retching. The air around her is cold, and the floor is concrete. Mildly sloped, she realizes as she's doubling over. A hand lowers from her mouth to the floor once she's certain she's not going to be ill. The floor is smooth beneath her fingertips, and she can feel the slope. Slight, gentle, just enough-- her eyes are beginning to adjust rapidly to the darkness, and she looks up enough to see the drain in the center.

A concrete room, with one door, and a drain in the center of the floor. Exceedingly goddamn ominous. Stella pushes herself up all the way and moves very gingerly to the wall, breathing deeply for a moment in hopes the nausea will fade. Her vision adjusts to the darkness, and she's aware of a pinprick of red light in one of the top corners. Glancing at it, she notes that it is very much likely to be a camera. So, she's still being watched. A scowl curls her lips, and she puts a hand through her hair as she puts her head back against the cool wall.

Take stock, she thinks. Figure out what the hell is going on.

The STRIKE team had turned on her. Rumlow had put a needle in her neck and hit her with what she expected was some sort of elephant sedative for how effective it was. She was taken somewhere, among people she's sure she can't identify. They mentioned Pierce, and something (someone?) called the Soldier. Pierce was in charge of SHIELD, wasn't he? Besides Fury. Stella adjusts carefully, glad to not be feeling so sick anymore as she puts her hands in her lap, fingers resting unconsciously over her abdomen. Those two lab techs, this was a routine for them. A planned mission.

A planned mission, and that makes her stomach turn. She hadn't seen the machinery, but she can guess what it's purpose was.

Stella fixates her gaze on the drain in the center of the room.

There had been a time before, during the war, when she'd been captured. It was a rookie mistake she shouldn't have made, and it had ended with her being in the clutches of a Hydra group with stranger tastes than others. She remembers how disgusted she'd felt, her hands bound above her head, while the three men gathered analyzed and appraised her like a treasured cow. Good hips, they'd said, good genes. Better genes, they'd said, she's perfection. Any little baby comin' outta this cunt would be just as perfect.

She remembers hearing their plans. She remembers hearing them suggest it to someone over a phone in thick german that she understood enough of to dread. She remembers one of the men's thick fingers at her belt, remembers the knife down her thigh and teasing, so tantalizingly teasing at skin that they praised and called perfect and remembers talk of how lovely she'd look as a mother.

Stella closes her eyes.

The Commandos had come before anything had gone far enough to be trouble. She'd been half naked, her clothes sliced plain off her lower half, underwear and fabric all unsalvageable. Her team, god bless, had come bursting in through the front door. Bucky had shot down two of the three before anyone could so much as blink, and Stella had taken the advantage of finally having the upper hand to imprison the third Hydra operative by locking his neck between her thighs and threatening to break it unless he let her down.

She remembers how furious Bucky had been. How angry her husband had been when he pulled her into his arms that night, how protective he was. Her boy was all rage and fury, heat and desperation, and he'd held her to him that evening as if he expected her to simply disappear.

She opens her eyes again, and looks right at the camera in the corner. Carefully, Stella moves to stand up. Her nudity is unsettling, as is the stickiness inbetween her thighs, but she ignores both of them and moves carefully, keeping a hand against the wall. Analyze the situation. Keep yourself together. This is no time to be thinking about being a widow, no time to be thinking about him, no time to be thinking about anything other than an escape. No time to be thinking about how much they put into her. No time to be thinking about who it belonged to.

A shaky breath escapes her as she presses her hand flat against a seam in the wall. Tracing it with her fingertips from floor to ceiling, she's quick to process that this is the door. Sealed shut tight, as she expected. Experimentally, the Captain steps back enough to wind up a punch and hit the damn thing as hard as she can.

Not so much as a dent.

So, it's built to hold up against a supersoldier. Furrowing her brows, she steps back again, staying relatively close to the wall. The room has revealed itself to be relatively small, and another shiver goes through her. Somehow it just seems like a bad idea to be sitting in the center, or close to it. The wall is serving as an anchor, and she has no wish to leave it. Carefully, very carefully, Stella maneuvers herself into a place relatively close to a corner, and she sits down, thinking.

Whoever this was, they had no intention of letting her go. They had plans for her, plans that she sorely didn't want to think about. Closing her eyes for a moment, she bows her head forward, and focuses on listening. There's got to be more to this room- it doesn't seem soundproofed, but the walls seem particularly thick and cool against her bare back. An empty concrete room, with only the sound of what seems to be the buzzing of fluorescent lights in the hallway to greet her.

Stella exhales sharply through her nose.

Focus, she thinks, forcing herself to calm her heartbeat and the panic steadily rising in her chest. You can't plan a way out if you panic, you can't get more information if you panic. Focus. Stay calm. Calm down. Her heart's beginning to race again, her breathing gradually shortening until she's all but gasping. Focus, focus, focus, damn you, focus, stop--

She curls up very gradually, pulling her knees to her chest and placing her head on top of them. Her hands go to her scalp, digging her fingers in through her hair and holding on tightly. Focus, focus, please, focus, focus. The panic is delayed, steadily rising through all her analyzing, and she can't stop thinking about the german man who'd so readily placed himself between her thighs. What it felt like to have a stranger's fingers probing her. Focus, focus, Bucky, please. Focus. Her finger dig in harsher into the skin on her head and she lets out a gasping, shaky sob, and bites back everything that comes after it. Bucky. Bucky, please.

Stella pushes herself back against the wall, curling a few fingers in her hair and shutting her eyes tight. A stranger's fingers, a harsh and mocking voice. They'd gotten there in time. They'd rescued her. Bucky had been so angry. She'd nearly killed the man. She'd nearly-- she'd--

Her panic is interrupted by a sound of steady beeps coming from the direction of the door, and Stella rights herself quickly, smothering the panic as best she can though her heart still pounds in her chest. Light floods the room, blinding her for a moment, and the shape of a man covered in deeply black combat gear greets her when she comes back to her senses. A black-haired woman stands behind him, her expression one of mild amusement.

"You have your orders, Soldier." The familiar voice of Second grates on Stella's ears, and she puts a name to a face to remember who to attack later. "Mission start. Get going." She shoves the masked man into the room and the door slides shut and seals itself, locking them both in the darkness.

He moves silently towards her, and Stella is suddenly too very deeply aware of her nakedness. She stands up quickly, listening to the whirr of some new kind of machinery, fully intending to fight him off. She won't allow this, damnit, will not go down without a fight, even bare-assed and on the verge of a panic attack. She lashes out rapidly, and the Soldier barely twitches, reaching to grab the fist she'd aimed at his face with a hand far too cold to be flesh. It makes her tense, and the sound of metal on metal tells her that there's something else going on with this man.

He is silent as he grabs her other wrist, tightening his grip on her even as she struggles against him, kicking and thrashing. Her blows connect, but she may as well be fighting against a rock with all of the reactions she gets from him. Both her wrists are enclosed by metal fingers and her body is twisted to force her first face against the wall and then find herself rather unceremoniously dragged down to the concrete floor.

The weight of him over top of her is inhumanly heavy, sturdy and strong, and he keeps his grip on her wrists tight.

"Submit," he says, in a voice that's muffled and wrong but tinged with something that sets every part of her body aflame.

"Get off me!" She snarls, writhing underneath him. A flesh hand comes to the back of her head, pushing her cheek down against the cool floor. He's strong. Strong as she is, if not even more-so. His positioning puts him in control, and the feeling of thick leather on her lower back is severely uncomfortable as she struggles.

"Submit." He says again, in the same monotone that makes her doubt for a moment that he may even be human.

"I will not--" She hisses, and he rather unceremoniously takes hold of one of her wrists before snapping it like a twig. The pain is sudden and startling, if not impossible to handle, and the gasp that leaves her mouth has her biting her tongue seconds later. The Soldier resumes holding both of her wrists without any sort of shift in his positioning, the cool metal against the break both soothing and sickening.

"You will submit." He intones, and Stella struggles to give him a retort. She opens her mouth, and he lifts her head to slam it against the concrete floor and leave her dazed and silent, the taste of blood filling her mouth. She blinks to clear her vision, struggling to pull herself together between the panic and the sudden pains, but it's clearly long enough for the Soldier.

The man shifts off of her, keeping his metal hand wrapped around her wrists as he maneuvers himself. He lets go of her long enough to take hold of both of her hips and pull her into an unceremonious position of face down and ass in the air, nudging her legs apart to reveal her sex to him. His grip is tight, and as Stella recovers from her dazing, she spits blood and saliva onto the concrete floor. He's leaving bruises on her, she knows, and he's holding tight because he doesn't want to risk her wriggling away from him. There's the shifting of leather, the unbuckling of his combat gear, and she is aware of the feeling of the scratchy fabric of his pants scraping against her backside before they're pushed down, leaving her with the uncomfortable feeling of a stranger's flesh on hers.

A stranger's fingers probing her, a stranger's hand holding hers, a stranger's voice whispering nothings into her ear. Stella shuts her eyes tight, struggling to reorient herself. A prisoner. A woman, a perfect woman. A stranger's touch. Her husband come to rescue her, her guardian angel, her--

He pulls her legs apart, positions himself in seconds, and thrusts into her without any second of hesitation. Stella bites back a scream, though it ends up only muffled, and the pain is immense. He mounts her like a dog would mount his bitch, and his hands move back to a position to keep her down. Her mind is racing, her thoughts swarming, her stomach aching. Her cunt grows wet around his cock simply as a response to the intrusion, and she bites back another sob.

To his credit, he doesn't try to give her any romance, not like it had been when she was captured. The Soldier is dead silent above her, no sounds of pleasure or pain or any sign that he was doing anything other than what he'd been ordered to fulfill. He thrusts into her as deeply as he can, gripping her flesh tight enough to bruise her and staying completely silent. Stella screws her eyes shut, trying to think of something else, trying to think of summer nights with her husband, trying to think of being curled up with her mother during terrible illness--

trying--

trying--

There had been three men, last time. A stickiness between her thighs, a trickling wetness of blood and come, bruises and fading bites. The Soldier above her grunts once and the warmth that fills her is familiar. He doesn't pull out, doesn't go soft. There were three of them, last time, and now she can remember the heavy taste in her mouth that she'd tried so hard to get rid of. She remembers being slapped and beaten and kicked, remembers feeling a rib crack under a steel-toed boot as another man thrusted into her repeatedly, the laughter as he commented on how tight she was, like a little girl. The Soldier breathes a few times, and begins again.

She remembers her hands bound, remembers her vision swimming. Remembers feeling a neck between her legs and remembers feeling herself snap it, remembers the gunshots and the knives and the feeling of a stranger's cock forcing itself into her. The Soldier's motions are mechanical, uncaring, unfeeling, and she can't decide whether or not it's better or worse than the last time. She can't decide if it's better or worse that nobody's coming to save her, and she can't decide if it's better or worse that at least now, the wounds are minor. The bone in her wrist is already set and, at least, set right, thanks to the Soldier's careful break.

He grunts, comes again, loosens his grip. He is silent, and still doesn't pull out of her. Stella is limp underneath him, lost and aching, her vision swimming with tears she defiantly refuses to shed. Her mouth still tastes of blood, her wrist still throbs.

She remembers that afterwards, Bucky had apologized so much for not being there. She remembers her own fury, her own anger, her own plan for vengeance. She remembers being mocked for it, defiled by Hydra goons and mocked for it by a higher up agent they captured. She remembers apologizing to the Colonel for killing them, remembers lying in all the reports. Three casualties, the first one said. Valuable information recovered. No injuries among unit. No injuries.

No injuries.

She closes her eyes as the Soldier begins again.

\------

It's Hydra. She learns this on the fourth day, when the Soldier returns for the fourth time, but this time with a friend, and Alexander Pierce watches the routine. She fought, again, and was defeated, again. By the fifth day she started going for his eyes, and by the sixth day he came into the room and immediately knocked her flat with a blow from his metal arm. The seventh, he was allowed a pistol, and she was motionless with the barrel of a gun against the back of her head, knowing that even if they thought she was valuable, she was just as much use to them dead as she was alive.

It's the ninth day when the Soldier arrives, this time with a familiar collar. It's the same metal one that the techs had put on her to keep her head still when the artificial method had still been on the table. The one that evidently only Hydra techs knew how to get off, and the one she knew that when it went on, it would not come off again. He approaches her on the floor and Stella simply stares up at him, her eyes full of hatred and defiance. Disgust, anger, all of it mixes in her chest.

"You are to be mine, now." He murmurs. His tone has changed, in a way she can't identify. Stella says nothing, simply staring at him, expecting more. It seems, almost, to leave him confused. The Soldier's dark eyes stare down at her at her position on the floor, her hands to her sides, her knees pulled up to her chest, her expression defiant and angry. Carefully, the man dressed in black combat gear kneels in front of her.

"You are to be mine." He says again, enunciating his words in a way that makes Stella think that maybe he assumes she didn't understand.

"I don't belong to anyone." She growls in response. "Least of all Hydra's dog."

The Soldier merely stares. The insult doesn't seem to affect him- but then, nothing else she'd spat at him in the past had. Alexander Pierce had called him the Fist of Hydra last time he'd visited. It wasn't hard for her to learn that the Soldier wasn't a real agent. The few other people she had seen since then called him Asset, if not Soldier, and he was silent through any sort of insult or degradation. This man was not a human, as she'd first guessed- at least, not to Hydra.

"You will belong to me. They're giving you to me." He says, quietly, and there's something else in his voice. Something she almost- almost recognizes. Something that nearly.... Nearly. Stella lifts her eyes from where she had been staring at his neck, anayzing how best she might try to attack his throat for his jugular vein, and to his face.

His eyes are dark and empty. The Soldier's eyes hold no emotion, no recognition. They are dull and dark, a rotting old house in winter, the bare bones that suggest that once there had been something wonderful in it but all traces of such a thing had since vanished. She sees color in them now, though. A shade of green. A familiar shade of green, something deep and dark and-- welcoming.

Stella stares into those eyes, an odd sense of resignation settling on her shoulders.

"You are mine." He says. "It is your job to have my children. For Hydra." There is something in his voice that tells her he's not quite sure, either. "I am to keep you. You are mine." He lifts the collar in his hands somewhat awkwardly, presenting it to her as if it were some sort of treasured present. A proposal. A--

Delicately, Stella lifts her hands to the corners of his mask. Her fingers catch on the edges, the places where it is molded so perfectly to his face to act as if it were a second skin. Her touch is light, testing, and the Soldier doesn't move. The collar is still held in both hands, flesh and metal, still presented to her despite the fact the man before her stays utterly motionless. Her eyes burn, and bile rises in her throat as she very carefully, very delicately, very nervously, pulls the mask off.

The face of her husband stares back at her, his eyes uncertain and empty, his jaw unshaven, his hair longer, his expression the sort that Stella associated with what came after a scolding. His fingers curl delicately around the collar and it takes a slow moment for the Soldier to become Bucky Barnes.

A proposal. The collar is a proposal. The collar is a plea.

"You are to be mine." Bucky says again, almost desperately.

Wordlessly, Stella tilts her head up and presents him with her throat.

\------

The room they're given is reminiscent of a hotel room, though she identifies it very quickly as a prison. There is no window, but there is a real and proper bed. A small bathroom is situated by the door, a shower and a sink and a toilet, and across from the bed is a small kitchenette with a fridge and a real stove. The lights are fluorescent and uncomfortably bright after spending so long in darkness, and there's lighting close to the floor ringing around the room that Stella doesn't think she could identify the purpose for.

Bucky led her here with his firm grip, his metal hand around her wrist, his grip keeping her as close to him as he could without making it difficult for them to walk. She had analyzed and memorized every damn step of the trip, with the metal collar heavy around her throat. Tight enough for her to never forget it was there, but loose enough to make it easy to swallow. Once or twice, Bucky had put a finger or two between her skin and the metal, a gesture of guidance to pull her in another direction.

He was gentler, now. Her acceptance of the collar had quelled whatever desperation she'd seen in him. He'd been afraid, and dimly Stella wonders if accepting it from him had been avoiding an alternative that scared him.

The door slides shut behind them with a beep that tells her it's sealed shut, and Stella counts no less than three cameras on a quick analysis of the room. Bucky takes her by her hips then and pulls her closer, looking her in the face. His mismatched hands move carefully to her shoulders and he touches her delicately, as if he expects her to break.

"I am- sorry." He says, uncertainly. "For. Hurting you." His speech is halting, as if he doesn't quite know how to speak. "I did not enjoy it. I- I do not enjoy it. They gave me orders. I did not want to hurt you." He stumbles over his words, and Stella furrows her brows.

This is an opportunity. She is not locked in the dark. They have given her back her husband. Her husband, a living weapon. Her hands lift back to his cheeks, feeling the scratchiness of the stubble beneath her palms. Bucky watches her, as if her touch means something much more than she knows.

"I forgive you." She says, quietly. Is this a blessing, or a curse? He was not acting of his own volition when he forced himself into her, nor was he doing this by choice. She refused to believe that some part of him even wanted it; she knew Bucky always wanted children, but not like this. Not like this. "It's not your fault. I forgive you."

"Thank you." He says, still with that same uncertainty. His voice is hoarse, lacking the confidence and swagger she remembers. "You- You will be safer now. I will. I will keep you safe." He is insistent, the slightest shift in tone with the desperation creeping into it. He pulls her closer to him for a moment, gripping onto her even tighter. The grip is, despite everything, a comfort. Stella's hands move from his face to his shoulders and his hands return to her hips. He closes his eyes, putting his forehead against hers. The tenderness after the darkness and ignorance is-- is something else. Is something new. All too suddenly, she realizes how deeply she craves it.

"You are mine." He says, and there's more emotion in his voice than she's heard from him since he arrived. "I will not let anyone touch you. You will not be hurt." Suddenly it's almost a snarl, and he pulls her against him that much tighter. Stella doesn't fight it, closing her eyes and allowing him. Her mind is reeling, considering what this might be. She knows what Hydra wants from her, now- supersoldiers. Children. They've given Bucky back to her, and he's her best chance at an escape.

"I am." She confirms, gently. Plan. The techs will be coming to analyze her soon enough, she knows it, and after nine days-- after nine days of persistent abuse, there's no avoiding that part of their plan. But if they leave Bucky with her, perhaps she can end it all before it starts. "I'm- I'm yours. I am."

"You're mine." He says, again, insistently. Furiously. A spark of something in his eyes, a spark that she saw last so long ago, after that rescue, after-- "Rumlow wants to have you. He talks about you. I will not let him. You belong to me." His hand goes to the collar, gripping onto it tightly. "This makes you mine." The anger and the desperation in his tone both make her tense, uncertain, and before she knows it he's pushing her back again, against the wall beside the door.

"I have to keep you." He says, desperately, sharply. "The techs want you to be pregnant tomorrow, when they come to see. If you are not, they will take you away from me. I have to keep you." The panic in his tone is heartbreaking, but to Stella it seems more reminiscent of a child afraid of losing his favorite toy than a husband scared for his wife. He doesn't understand, she realizes, all he knows is what they've told him.

"I don't want to hurt you anymore, please," Bucky practically whines at her, his fingers curling around the metal of the collar, but she knows there's no saying no to this. Stella says nothing, biting her tongue and giving him nothing but a quick nod in response. Get it over with quickly, she pleads, no more. Bucky gives her nothing more to try and process, simply pulling her from the wall to the floor and nudging her back into the position of face down with her ass in the air.

This way, she supposes, is easier to pretend that it's not Bucky doing this to her.

He's gentler this time when he grips her hips, and instead of simply shoving his pants down far enough he does her the courtesy of removing all his gear and leaving it in a heap slightly to the left of her. A knife peeks out from among the leather on what she supposes is his belt, and she feels her stomach twist painfully. Her eyes burn. They never had sex this way, back before she lost him. They'd always been face to face. She tries not to tense as the Soldier pulls her close to him, forces herself to relax at the feeling of him positioning himself. They'd alway been face to face, and he'd always kissed her so sweetly. Praised her while she was beneath him, had clever words for when she was above. So gentle, so careful, so--

The Soldier eases himself into her this time, in a way that is neither forceful nor particularly careful, and then his fingers go right to the collar around her throat. Metal fingers against the metal collar, cold and cold and cold, and Stella screws her eyes shut tight and puts her cheek against the floor. He doesn't understand, she tells herself as he begins to move in that ragged, rough way. He doesn't know what he's doing.

"You're soft," the Soldier says from somewhere above her, his flesh hand still tight on her hips. His movements are purposeful, strong, but void of everything she wants to be there. "You're so soft. They'll let me keep you." The metal hand goes flat against the back of her neck, sending shivers down her spine. Cold cold cold. "You'll stay. You'll stay, not like the red one, you'll stay."

He leans down over her then, an awkward position, and he presses his lips not to the skin of her shoulder but to the metal of the collar, and Stella bites her lip to hold back a sob. He doesn't understand, she tells herself again. He doesn't understand. The culmination of the tears she's been holding back since her arrival here threaten to make an appearance, but she swallows them down, staying motionless and pliant and silent silent silent beneath him.

\------

"Camera duty with the two of you is a downright pleasure." The tech snorts as he speaks, and it makes Stella want to break his nose. "Shame they banned jacking off in the camera room after Anderson ruined the keyboards. You're damn pretty when you've got your ass in the air like that."

The Soldier growls from his place behind her and against the wall, and Stella doesn't try to turn her head to see him.

"Down, boy." The tech says, rolling his eyes. Stella is restrained quite tightly, naked as always and in a position that will let absolutely anyone get a good look at her. This was to see what the results of their tests were, she knows. To see how well they managed to breed their stubborn bitch. The metal collar is magnetized to the table, her arms held down and her legs elevated slightly and spread. Bucky had helped, before he'd been ordered back to his place just out of her sight. Blood tests, analysis, observation, all kinds of nonsense she found disgusting, and never once did they use a name or a title. 'It' was popular, and so was 'that one', and 'her', though the second someone had tried to use 'the bitch' they'd ended up with a knife through their eye courtesy of the man she was beginning to think quite possibly was still her husband.

"You must be proud." The tech drawls, flipping through a series of papers. "Looks like you've got the start of one lovely, healthy, fucked-up baby on the way. Better hope it's not a scrawny little shit like you used to be, or things aren't gonna be all that fun for you." He chuckles, and there's another little growl from somewhere to her left. Closer than the first one. Stella closes her eyes, and says nothing.

"It's a shame, really. Rumlow talked about making it a contest. Whoever's dad gets to keep you the whole time. Then Pierce went and ruined it, after we'd held bets and fuckin' everything. No, the Asset has a job to do," the tech says it sarcastically in a mimic of what Stella supposes is Alexander Pierce's voice and she resists the urge to roll her eyes. Finish what you're doing here and let me go back with Bucky. He's nearly remembered. "Why's he get to have you, anyway? Bastard never gets turned on about anything and then we hand you to him and he can't get the damn thing to go down." The tech's prying eyes slide over her body in a way that she can practically feel, and Stella forces herself not to shiver. "Though, I can guess why..."

There's a pause. A shift of fabric. She doesn't open her eyes. A motion of footsteps. A stranger's fingers. She doesn't open her eyes.

In a flash, the touch is gone, and there is someone snarling in her husband's voice, thick and angry Russian, and the tech is gasping. Someone barks at him in an angry tone, a respone of Russian in a feminine voice, and the tech is dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. Bucky nearly broke his neck, she knows, and for a quiet moment she thanks whatever god damn higher power put her here that he meant it when he said he was going to keep her safe. She risks opening her eyes then to see Bucky standing over a tech who is all but crawling away, the Soldier's dark eyes on her, and when he notices she's finally looking back the man comes creeping closer to her, his flesh hand raising to run his fingers down the curve of her jawline.

Bucky says something more in Russian, softer and gentler in tone, and Stella does not bother to tell him she doesn't know the language. His flesh hand is left flat and warm against her cheek, a sharp contrast to the cool metal now resting on her hip, and his eyes don't leave her face. There's something new in those dark eyes. Something more present, something more here. Something more, something new.

"I will keep you safe." He murmurs, only to her, in that same soft tone. "They will not touch you." His fingers trace down her jawline and find the metal collar again, and she feels his thumb against metal and flesh both in a way that suggests he might find that a comfort. "They will not touch you." He repeats.

Stella tries to find her voice.

Her throat is dry, her body tense. She keeps herself calm simply because there is no other option. There is a child inside of her, and instead of horror all she finds herself feeling is an odd sense of relief. It's Bucky's, and not some stranger's. She's got his protection, some form of his affection. The Soldier is in her pocket, and that's all she needs. That's all she needs to get out, she knows it.

She tries to find her voice.

Bucky keeps his movements sharp and curt when he steps away from her, undoing the magnetization that keeps her head against the table. He all but breaks the straps on her wrists and her ankles, and he does break the machinery that keeps her legs elevated. He gives her inner thighs a courteous glance, as if making sure that there's nothing there that he needs to worry for. She feels her eyes burn as he oh-so delicately moves enough to hoist her off the table. If there's anyone else in the room, they don't mind it.

She tries to find her voice.

He holds her bridal style, her head against his shoulder. Her vision wavers, goes blurry, and finally she feels the warmth of a tear trickling down her cheek. The way he holds her is tight and desperate, but his whole body is stiff and unrelenting, tense, unwelcoming. Foreboding, dangerous, coiled. All the words that come to her mind don't seem like the right way to describe him, not him, not her Bucky. She'd never known him to be so ready to kill in the past. Focus. Keep calm. Plan. Keep calm. Don't

don't don't don't

"I love you." She offers, weakly.

don't  
don't  
don't

"I- I love you." She says, again, feeling whatever resolve she did have begin to crumble. Her husband, back from the dead. Her husband, here and alive and meant to be with her. Her husband. Bucky. It's not like the first time. Those three are dead, those three were strangers. This one is her husband. This one is the only one in her life that matters. This isn't the same. "I do, I love you. Bucky. Please. I love you." She could-- she could find a way out, this way. She could stay with him. She could escape. She could not.

The Soldier looks down to her in his arms, and those dark eyes stare back at her in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find [my tumblr right here](http://magpirate.tumblr.com/). comments and kudos are my favorite.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Bucky." She says, her voice hoarse as he uses the cloth to clean her of the blood and dirt he'd smeared all over her body. He doesn't react, and for a moment she thinks she hasn't said it out loud.
> 
> "Bucky," Stella tries again. "Look at me, please..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HATI TAKES FOREVER TO UPDATE ANYTHING: THE AO3 ACCOUNT. dedicated to those of you who are still reading and sharing my fics despite the fact that i go months without putting anything up. you're all wonderful. have some terrible trash porn.

He doesn't know she's awake.

Stella keeps her eyes closed as she feels Bucky's hands roaming over her body. They lie together in the small bed in the room that locks from the outside, the dim lights illuminating the floor but keeping them both bathed in darkness. His touch is like a ghost, metal fingers wandering over bare skin like he's relearning the planes of her body. Stella keeps her eyes closed and stays quiet and pretends to sleep, because if she's asleep she doesn't have to worry quite so much anymore. Her back is to him, she lays on her side, naked and cold and pressed against the heat of him just beside her.

Bucky's flesh hand replaces metal, and she feels calloused fingers wandering over her shoulder and up to her neck, tracing around the steel collar she wears. Delicately, he slides two fingers between the cold steel and warm skin, tracing around it as gently as he can. Stella keeps her breathing even, deep. She is dreaming. She is asleep. She feels him shift just behind her, feels the scratch of his unshaven jaw as his lips press to the nape of her neck, just above the collar. He touches skin instead of metal, and he stays there. He lingers.

"My girl," He whispers, an unrecognizable fondness in his voice, and she feels that metal hand wrapping around her middle to pull her closer. "My girl." She feels the ridges as his metal fingers slide over her bare abdomen, does her best not to shiver when he places the metal palm flat against the place in her abdomen where he's left his mark.

There is the barest of curves there, an imperceptible bump in the terrain of her body. She opens her eyes. She stares at the wall. She tries. Medical has been fascinated with watching this, with seeing the shifting in her body while it changes to compensate for the child they've forced into her. The Asset's wife, they call her. The Soldier's girl. He smiles every time they do. Like he's been given a gift. He'll give her a prideful look, then turn around and snarl at anyone who might come too close with her with intentions he doesn't approve of.

They've turned her boy into a beast.

Bucky's metal fingers wander over the swell in her abdomen, and she feels his flesh hand pull at the collar around her neck. The steel digs into her throat and pulls her head back, and Stella utters a quick huff of air to let him know she's awake, he's woken her up. The bed shifts as he sits up, and Stella feels him tugging the collar again, the hand against her stomach and the steel against her throat mixing together to set her lying on her back. Her blue eyes are wide open as she stares up at her husband, staring at him with a mix of love and uncertainty and desperation.

It's been like that for a long while, now. She loves him. She wants to love him. She is afraid of him. His flesh fingers hook around the collar and still he holds onto it like it is something prized. He looks at her like she is something for him to own, speaks that way, behaves that way. Bucky nudges her legs apart and places himself between them. Neither of them are wearing any clothes, and he is half hard, but his interest is elsewhere. At least for now. She is afraid of him. His flesh and metal hands move upwards, one at either side of her head, and the Soldier dips himself down to place his lips on hers.

Oh, she loves him. She loves him. She loves him.

Stella lifts her hands to his chest automatically, pressing there with that palpable indecision. She kisses back, and debates what damage it would do if she shoved him off of her and knocked him to the floor. She tastes him on her lips and wonders what they'd threaten more if she misbehaved now, him or the baby? Bucky is so careful, so careful. He keeps his body elevated instead of lying down on top of her as he would in the past, preventing himself from lying on top of the swell in her tummy as he sucks on her lower lip. He closes his eyes, his forehead against hers, and Stella keeps her eyes wide open.

"My girl," He whispers again, and he smiles, and Stella smiles back.

Pretending isn't very hard. Sometimes he'll speak to her and she won't be looking at him, and for a moment she'll close her eyes and be back at home in Brooklyn instead of locked up in an underground Hydra facility. He'll touch her in his reverent, possessive way, and she'll imagine their marital bed. Pretending is the easy part. Place yourself in a dream, and suddenly all that matters is that it's Stella-and-Bucky and Bucky-and-Stella again, suddenly all that matters is his fingers through her hair and his palm on her stomach and she can pretend the baby they're bringing into this world is going to grow up safe and warm and happy instead of whatever monstrous plans have been laid out for it. Pretending is the easy part. All she has to do is keep her eyes closed.

She watches him when he lays down beside her again, and she moves with him instead of against him as his hands pull her closer to his chest. Bucky is still warm and he treats her like something to be treasured, both arms wrapping around her to hold her inescapably against him. His fingers dig into her skin just slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind her that this is precisely where he wants her to be. Stella wonders, in the part of her mind that she tries to ignore, how much he remembers. How much he wants to remember. The thought is insidious and cruel but it comes back time and time again- What if he does want this? What if he's glad things are like this?

He presses his lips to her forehead, and Stella wishes in silence that she could see inside his head.

"I am going away today." He murmurs against her skin. "There is a mission that requires me." He's started talking more, at least. She's told him before that she likes it when he speaks to her, when she can hear his voice. He smiled when she told him. He smiles more now, too. "You will stay here. No one will come to get you."

"When will you come back?" It is one of the few questions he'll allow, she knows this, and so she asks it. Asking where they are is not allowed. Asking what the medics want is allowed, but only so long as they don't tell him to keep her silent. Asking if she can go outside is not allowed. Bucky doesn't move from his position and gives a slow exhale through his nose.

"Before you go to sleep." He says, finally. He gives her nothing more, untangling himself from her body and sitting up. He looks down at her, and Stella stares up at him. Metal fingertips are drawn through her hair. They watch eachother in silence for a long moment, before he moves to stand. Stella follows him with her eyes as he goes to the small closet. She traces scars with her gaze and dimly remembers what they felt like under her fingertips.

His skin is marred, scars old and new, and she can identify the wounds that would cause each and every one. He pulls his underwear up to cover himself, his pants follow, and she watches a bullet wound disappear beneath black fabric over his hips. She watches what must be whipping scars vanish beneath his under clothes, takes note of a fading circle of burns around his throat as he pulls the padded chestpiece up over his head and down around himself. He tightens the straps and Stella thinks of the scarred place where metal meets flesh, the dark space that must have bled when they attached that thing to him. He's been tortured. Countless, countless times. They've left their marks on his skin, and sometimes she imagines one day she'll wake up and see Hydra's symbol carved into his features, to make him utterly unrecognizable to her. Bitterly, she thinks that by comparison she may as well be living in luxury.

Stella lays her head back down on the bed, closes her eyes, and she listens. He polishes a knife and slides it into it's sheathe at his hip. They will provide him with his guns, cleaned and ready to end lives, but she listens as he checks a pistol and loads it, and the shifting sound of metal and leather as he places it in it's holster. A pistol and a knife. The idea of escape still lingers somewhere in her chest, but she doesn't dare entertain them. He hasn't left for a mission since she's arrived. That in itself is enough to tell her that whatever this is, it's going to be something big.

Nick Fury is dead, isn't he? Hydra's got the upper hand.

The silence stretches on, and Stella opens her eyes, tilting her head up. Bucky stands above her, his mask and goggles in his metal hand. He watches her closely, before placing his flesh hand to her forehead and leaning down to kiss her, just softly. Stella does not reciprocate.

"My girl." He whispers, pride in his voice. "My girl. My child." His flesh hand moves from her forehead to the swell in her abdomen. "When I return you will be safe." He smiles at her, and those words alone make Stella's blood run cold.

"I love you." She manages, the words feeling dead on her tongue. And he smiles. He smiles, places the mask around his jaw, covers his eyes with the goggles, and steps around the bed to approach the door. It slides open to let him out, and Stella listens to the trio of clicks that is it's locking sequence before it's sealed once more, and she is left alone.

In his absence, all of it becomes more palpable. She ceases to be a wife, and becomes once again a prisoner. Guilt and anger and fear and sorrow mix together in her chest, a tempest inside of her, and Stella feels herself curling tightly around her own body as if to shield against it. She looks down to the bump in her abdomen, the babe in her belly, and feels her eyes burn. She does not weep.

"He wasn't always this way," She tells it. She tries. "He was a good man. He still is. He's a good man. He's only lost. He's only. He's lost." She wishes the lights would go down altogether and put her back in the dark, let her sleep until he returns. Let her pretend the world doesn't exist anymore, that it's only her and Bucky. Let her pretend that she's only here when he is, that her presence depends on his. "He wasn't always this way." She repeats.

Stella closes her eyes.

If she sleeps, she doesn't know it.

\------

The next she is aware of, there's the three clicks in reverse that tell her the door is unlocking. Stella props herself up to look towards it and immediately sits ramrod straight at the sight of Bucky, bloodied and dirty, stepping into the room as the door again seals itself behind him. He pulls his mask and goggles off, throws them aside. His expression is one of bloodlust and anger, and Stella can't tell if the blood smeared over his uniform is his or a stranger's. Still, she's given no sort of explanation, and the predatory look in his eyes makes her hesitant to ask.

Bucky stalks over to her, his flesh and metal hands both closing around her ankles and pulling her with no small amount of force to the edge of the bed. The blankets are dragged with her, bunched up under her ass, and Stella's squirming is purely on reflex. She tries to free herself from his grip, but Bucky will not allow it. His hands move to her hips, pressing her down against the bed with a strength that tells her that if he truly wanted, he could hurt you. And the baby. Dread and fear mix in her heart, blood smeared from his hands onto her thighs as he adjusts his grip and forces her legs apart.

He doesn't look up at her or ask any questions.

"Be still." He growls, and then she feels his hot breath on her cunt and his face between her thighs and Stella's whimper is either fear or want or both as she feels his scruff scrape mercilessly against sensitive skin, feels his tongue lick into her without a moment's hesitation. Stella claps a hand over her mouth with an audible whimper as his tongue works against her entrance, feeling metal fingers shove themselves mercilessly into her hole and begin to work at stretching her open.

The contact is unexpected and startling and Stella does not know if grabbing onto him would do any better. Bucky's movements are precise and measured with the express purpose of stimulating her- to what end, she doesn't know. What she is aware of is the stubble on his jaw scraping the soft flesh of her inner thighs, what she is aware of is the shifting of the metal plates as he forces a third finger into her, the texture on them as his mechanical digits sap her body heat. What she is aware of is a mix of her own wetness and his saliva trickling down his chin with his persistence, the way his tongue contacts his fingers inside her cunt, the roughness in the way he handles her.

She is forced over the edge into an orgasm, giving a sharp cry-- and with it, the first explosion rocks the room around them. Stella's breathing becomes ragged, her ears ringing and her heart racing as Bucky pulls his fingers out of her and shoves her down onto the bed, pulling her hands away from her mouth and leaning down to kiss her hard.

"Focus on me." Bucky growls against her lips, and Stella tastes herself on his tongue. Another loud boom shakes the bunker, and Stella thinks of a foxhole she'd hidden in years and years and years ago. Bucky maneuvers her like a doll. "Focus on me." He says again, the growl trickling out of his tone. Blood is smeared on her naked body as he sits down and pulls her onto his lap, blood and dirt and grime that matches the mess of his uniform.

Another loud bang follows, and Stella tries to ask him, tries to find the words. She is silenced by metal fingers coated in her own juices being pressed into her mouth, silenced by Bucky's flesh arm firm around her waist, by his breath at her ear. His arousal is hard against her ass, still covered by his bloodstained pants, but he makes no move to take them off.

"It's only me here." He says into her ear, keeping her tongue held down. Stella squirms in his grip, bites down on those metal fingers, tries to tell him that there's something going on, that they've got to get out, but he is unrelenting and firm, a cliff face that is impossible to climb. "It's only me here." He says again, firmer. His hand moves downward, teasing at her clit and the lips of her cunt still coated in his saliva. She tries to shy away, tries to close her legs, but Bucky merely growls, and she cannot disobey.

"There's nothing going on out there." He says, soothingly against the flesh of her throat. "You and I and our baby are safe in here, it is safe inside you." His flesh fingers slide inside of her, and Stella feels her teeth scrape against metal as he rocks his fingers in and out. Another loud bang, another explosion. Someone is laughing down the hall, she can hear them. Someone else is weeping. "I am going to keep you and our baby safe, because you belong to me." Bucky's scruff sends goosebumps down her spine.

Stella groans as he coaxes another orgasm out of her, a numbness dwelling in her toes.

"You are mine and it is mine and you are safe." He murmurs against her skin, his fingers rolling in circles inside of her. "All the bad is going away, now. All the bad in the world." Stella feels her eyes burn, tastes warm metal on her tongue, trembles in his arms. "It's only me here."

There is no love in his minstrations, only a sort of mechanical persistence that Stella wouldn't attribute to a real human being. He whispers soothing words to her in that careful voice of his, growls whens he tries to pull away. Explosion after explosion rocks the underground bunker. Third, fourth, he makes her come until she can think of nothing past the ringing in her ears, the metal fingers in her mouth, the ache in her cunt, the heat of his body circling around her.

This is hell, she thinks.

This is heaven, she thinks.

The world melts into colors and sounds and sensations, the softness of his voice against the sounds of gunfire and explosions, the roaring of somebody's machines. Someone's. Someone's saying her name. Someone's crying. She feels warmth on her shoulder, whether it be teardrops or blood or neither, and he presses his thumb down on her clit. Fifth, and she sags in his grip like a ragdoll, her vision blurring around the edges and stars shining in her chest. Bucky slides his fingers out of her, and she is aware only of the absence. Silence settles on the both of them like a fog, the noise and the shaking and all the rest becoming distant and empty before it's gone altogether. He eases her off of his lap and back onto the bed proper, letting her lay down as he licks the last of her wetness from his fingers.

He vanishes for just a moment into the fog of silence, and Stella is aware of him returning with a wet cloth. Diligently, he wipes the drool from her jaw and his metal hand. He pulls her legs apart gently, peeking at her cunt after the rough thrusts of his metal fingers earlier to ensure there is no damage. Seemingly satisfied, he uses the damp cloth to wipe the blood and grime from her thighs, erasing the visible handprints and doing her the favor of keeping her from staining the fabrics on the bed.

"Bucky." She says, her voice hoarse as he uses the cloth to clean her of the blood and dirt he'd smeared all over her body. He doesn't react, and for a moment she thinks she hasn't said it out loud.

"Bucky," Stella tries again. "Look at me, please..."

He lifts his eyes now, that clear and beautiful green looking into her face. There is a concern in his features, a worry in his gaze. He keeps moving his hand and the now dirty cloth, though, clearing away the dirt and grime and blood he'd stained her with. He pays extra attention to the swell of her abdomen.

"What was that?" She whispers to him. "Those noises. What were they?" Her voice is weak, barely there. As if she struggles to speak. Bucky's features harden. He looks away from her, stands up, turns his back. Clutches the cloth tighter in his grip. Both of Stella's hands go to the collar around her throat, curling her fingers around the metal as delicately as she can. "Bucky?"

"Hydra is fixing it." He murmurs. "Killing the world." He moves over to the sink, turns on the water, and washes the blood and dirt from the cloth beneath it. "Killing the bad in the world, sending it away. Making us safe. Making you safe." He sounds almost as if he's reciting it. She watches his back, thinking of the whipping scars beneath his mission gear. The sealed up bullet holes all over his body. How many scars does he have that she can't see? She tightens her grip on the metal collar, and lays her head back down against the pillows.

Killing the bad in the world. Hydra's idea of bad.

She thinks of the war. She thinks of the clink of dog tags against her chest, of holding a dying woman in her arms while she promised to take her child to safety. She thinks of seeing Bucky's grim exhaustion after mission after mission after mission, and his sorrow at the people they couldn't save. She thinks of seeing him in the dark afterwards, and thinks of how he tried so hard to hide his nightmares from her. She remembers waking up to his thrashing and panic, and remembers breathless apologies and pleas for her to go back to sleep. It wasn't just night terrors from the war, wasn't it?

They've turned her boy into a beast, and it started a long time ago.

She remembers finding him in the dark in a cage, and thinks of how he'd stared up at her for a moment like he couldn't recognize her. How it had taken time for the light to come on in his eyes again, and how he'd looked at her like she was the sun itself. But he had such terrible nightmares. Such terrible dreams. He seemed aged, he seemed hurt, he seemed like the life itself was draining out of him, and he was trying so hard to hide it. He was trying so hard to hide his change.

Gentle hands on her wrists pull her fingers away from the collar.

"Go to sleep." He says, as he shifts onto the bed beside her. He sits down, but does not lie down beside her. His flesh hand rests on the skin of her stomach, touching the barest of bumps there like it is a treasure and not simply another part of her body. Stella looks up at him, her eyes burning, her heart twisting in her chest.

Staying, she decides, means losing him. Just as much as leaving would.

\------

The doctors are quite determined to keep track of the baby's growth. Bucky takes her with startling regularity to a group of medical techs who are consistently the same, and he will stand directly in front of her while the group of four maneuver her body, look inside of her womb with an ultrasound capable of producing a clearer picture than Stella's ever seen, make sure Bucky's keeping her clean and tending to her needs. Bucky will proudly give his report, proving that he's been following orders and keeping her content.

By the time the bump in her stomach is more pronounced, Stella's started simply tuning all of this out.

Instead, she watches the screen. Her child is there, and she can see the parts of it's body quite well. Two little arms, two little legs, a squishy-looking head. There's debates about the gender, still, but Stella's hoping it's a little boy. She'd want a girl, but-- In the state she's in, she doubts a girl would be any safer. One of the doctors is discussing how long there is to go to delivery, and the various plans they have to ensure it would be smooth. Stella keeps her eyes on the colorless screen that shows her her child, and tries not to listen.

"A natural birth would be the best way, clearly, but there's no telling who wants to deliver it." Someone says from their observation place against the wall. "It would be messy."

"We're all qualified to deal with that kind of mess. Medical liscenses, remember?" Someone else snorts, and the first person scoffs. "And anyway, the only problem about planning for the birth is dealing with the Soldier. He doesn't want anyone going near her, you think he'll be happy to let somebody else be the first one to handle his kid?"

"He doesn't even know it's his." A third person chuckles. "He probably just thinks she's getting fat because he's taking good care of her. The solution's easy, really-- Sedate him, knock her out, and cut the bitch open--"

There is a flurry of activity, suddenly, and Stella tears her eyes away from the screen in time to see a woman in a lab coat being held tightly against the wall with a metal fist. There's a sound of guns cocking and Stella feels anxiety developing in her chest. It comes in a series of snapshots instead of clear images; Bucky with a syringe in his flesh hand, Bucky driving a needle into the woman's eye, an echo of shrieking and an environment of clear panic when the shrieking comes to silence comes to technicians yelling. Not a single gunshot, she notes, and Stella's finding herself oddly calm.

Bucky protecting her. Bucky protecting their child. It seems only right.

"You will not cut her open." The Soldier growls to those who still remain, and Stella feels her eyes drawing back to the screen. Why is she so calm about this? Why is she so unfazed? "I will be there. That is mine. She is mine. If you hurt her, I will hurt you." There's a possessiveness in his tone that has lingered for far longer than Stella's been here, she realizes. The woman keeps her eyes on the screen as a trembling technician comes closer to her, and she can feel Bucky's eyes on her as the technician pulls the camera away from her abdomen and wipes it clean.

The image is on screen for just a few moments longer. Two little arms, two little legs, a squishy head. It flashes once, and is gone, and Stella feels a metal hand returning to her stomach. The cool steel wanders over skin almost delicately, a sensation that she's come to associate with protection and comfort. He just killed a woman. He just killed a woman for insulting her, for alluding to a threat to their child, and all she wants to do is curl into him. She would be afraid, if she hadn't found herself growing used to it. The Winter Soldier is a monster. Her boy is a beast. But he is a monster who loves her so, a beast who is determined to protect her and the child inside of her as if his very life depends on it.

He helps her to her feet. His hand goes to the soft skin on the back of her neck for just a moment, his metal hand staying against her heavily pregnant stomach to help her stay upright. The flesh hand eventually finds it's way to thread her fingers through his, holding tightly to her hand as he leads her away from the room with the medical techs. A shaky voice requests security clearance and the clean-up crew. Stella rests her head on Bucky's shoulder and stays silent, thinking instead of the picture of the child inside of her.

Two little arms. Two little legs. A squishy head.

At least, she supposes, it will come into this world well loved.

As she has done plenty of times before, Stella turns her focus to the pathways they take. It's routine. She knows the way from their room to the medical labs by heart; the problem is, she doesn't know how big the compound is. She doesn't know the easiest way to escape. They're keeping her in the dark on purpose, and it's nothing short of frustrating. It's getting harder and harder for her to focus on the thought of escape, but the further her pregnancy gets the more certain she is she has to. She has to find her way out of here, Bucky and an infant in tow. He knows the way out, though, she knows that much.

Her blue eyes drift to his face, almost unsurprised to feel him watching her out of the corner of his eyes. He looks to her with an expression somewhere between protectiveness and love, and Stella's not quite sure how to take it. Still, it's preferable to the void that used to be there. The empty space that occupied where her husband should be. It's preferable to see something in those eyes, even if that something isn't quite what she was looking for. She stays quiet as they walk, instead looking forward and towards the hallways they never go down. If she only knew what was down there-- if she only knew this damn place better.

She gives a slow breath as they approach their bunker. Cell, more like. The usual routine is carried on; the door seals itself shut between them with three steady clicks, and Bucky picks up a blanket from one of the chairs in order to wrap it around her and cover her nudity. He leads her to the bed like he's fretting over her, sitting her down and pressing a kiss to her forehead before crouching to press a kiss to the swell of her stomach. Bucky lingers there, and Stella closes her eyes.

She doesn't like the idea of having her child here, even with Bucky's protection here for her. After all, hadn't they planned to have a family together? Playing pretend, here in Hydra, it was not having the family they wanted. It was letting monsters breed them like dogs, and handing over an innocent to the clutches of someone who wouldn't care about it at all. No, Hydra would take her child and form it into something to suit their own goals and needs. Hydra would no doubt take this child and force her to bear another if this plan succeeded, and what would that mean? A life of being condemned to see her children become as scarred and hurt as their father. As empty and gone as the Soldier, as broken and marred as herself.

No. No, she damn well will not allow it. Something like anger wells up in her heart and she puts her hand on the back of Bucky's head, feeling the scruff on his jaw against her soft skin. She needs him. Doesn't he want to see his child grow up happy? Grow up safe and warm and loved, and not with a knife in it's hand before it's fifth birthday? She needs him. She needs him, if this is going to work. Bucky is her only chance. They've given her a child. They've given her her husband.

The words leave her lips before she can stop herself.

"Bucky, we need to get out of here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://magpirate.tumblr.com/).  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr can be found [here](http://magpirate.tumblr.com/). comments and kudos are my lifeblood.


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